More deaccessions from the Metropolitan Museum of Art at auction
Christie’s are to sell another major slice of deaccessioned material from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, just under a year after they held a dedicated auction devoted to a dispersal from the Met’s holdings of English furniture and works of art.
This latest dispersal offered to benefit the Met’s acquisitions fund will be devoted to Chinese ceramics and comprise 600 lots spanning the Song to Qing dynasties. A dedicated auction titled ‘Collected in America: Chinese Ceramics from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’ will be staged on September 15 during New York’s Asian auction series.
It follows the sale ‘American Collecting in the English Tradition: Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’ realised a premium-inclusive $4.3m for 191 lots last October.
The latest ensemble takes in works acquired from the late 19th through to the 20th century and includes a group of porcelain from the museum’s first major acquisition of Asian Art from Samuel Putnam Avery, an early trustee, in 1879, as well as a group of peachbloom-glazed scholars’ vessels from the collection of Mary Stillman Harkness, wife of Standard Oil heir Edward Stephen Harkness.
An additional online auction of ceramics from the museum will be held at the same time.
Highlights are currently touring, stopping and will be on view in Hong Kong from May 26-30.
This 8¼in (21cm) high chrysanthemum vase is from a group of peachbloom-glazed vessels acquired from Mary Stillman Harkness.
It is one of the lots to be included in Christie’s September 15 sale of Chinese ceramics from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and has an estimate of $700,000-900,000.